Ads in Artificial Intelligence ⇥ openai.com

When I watched a bunch of A.I. company ads earlier this year, I noted Anthropic’s spot was boring and vague. Well, that did not last, as it began running a series of excellent ads mocking the concept of ads appearing in a chatbot. They are sharp and well-written. No wonder Anthropic aired them during the Super Bowl.

Anthropic also published a commitment to keep Claude ad-free. I doubt this will age well. Call me cynical, but my assumption is that Anthropic will one day have ads in its products, but perhaps not “Claude” specifically.

The reason anyone is discussing this is because ads are coming to OpenAI’s ChatGPT:

ChatGPT is used by hundreds of millions of people for learning, work, and everyday decisions. Keeping the Free and Go tiers fast and reliable requires significant infrastructure and ongoing investment. Ads help fund that work, supporting broader access to AI through higher quality free and low cost options, and enabling us to keep improving the intelligence and capabilities we offer over time. If you prefer not to see ads, you can upgrade to our Plus or Pro plans, or opt out of ads in the Free tier in exchange for fewer daily free messages.

Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you. Answers are optimized based on what’s most helpful to you. When you see an ad, they are always clearly labeled as sponsored and visually separated from the organic answer.

It is incredible how far we have come for these barely-distinguished placements to be called “visually separated”. Google’s ads, for example, used to have a coloured background, eventually fading to white. The “sponsored link” text turned into a little yellow “Ad” badge, eventually becoming today’s little bold “Ad” text. Apple, too, has made its App Store ads blend into normal results. In OpenAI’s case, they have opted to delineate ads by using a grey background and labelling them “Sponsored”.

Now OpenAI has something different to optimize for. We can all pretend that free market forces will punish the company if it does not move carefully, or it inserts too many ads, or if organic results start to feel influenced by ad buyers. But we have already seen how this works with Google search, in Instagram, in YouTube, and elsewhere. These platforms are ad-heavy to the detriment and frustration of users, yet they remain successful and growing. No matter what you think of OpenAI’s goals already, ads are going to fundamentally change ChatGPT and the company as a whole.